1. Last week Skyfire released a new and updated version of this server-rendering internet browser.
2. Version 1.5 is available for S60 3rd Edition and a new public beta for Symbian^1 touchscreen is released.
3. According to them, many features are added and improved. Including :-
- Symbian S60 3rd edition
– Smooth Scrolling: Scroll operations are more fluid.
– Updated user interface for 3rd edition devices.
– Performance tweaks: Many small enhancements for a more robust and faster browsing experience.
- Beta for Symbian S60 5th edition (Symbian^1)
– Finger friendly UI: A new, intuitive, and finger friendly UI for high resolution touchscreen devices provides an easier browsing experience.
– Smooth Scrolling: Kinetic scrolling has been enabled to Skyfire. Pan or flick the screen to move in any direction smoothly on touchscreen.
– Full screen mode: For touchscreen, browse in full screen mode for maximum screen real estate. Bring the controls back by clicking on the corner icon at any time.
– Auto-Rotate: Browse in portrait or landscape mode with a simple change of the device orientation.
4. Sad to say, it’s not entirely true. There are some things that worked out of the box and some other things are still the same sluggish overhyped application.
5. For touch devices, Skyfire 1.5 is hard to use. Doing the most basic stuff such as reading text is a pain using Skyfire. Text is not rendered correctly to fit on the screen. You have to scroll left and right. How can they claim Skyfire is “THE BEST MOBILE BROWSING EXPPERIENCE” if it cant even display text properly? This is too much!
6. It gets more frustrating as you see the checkerboard is displayed all the time. It seems that Skyfire is re-rendering all the elements when you scroll.
7. The kinetic scrolling is a nice addition but you have to do it very carefully because if you flicked your finger wrongly, you will be presented with the checkerboard (again!). Not the content that you want to read.
8. The menu has been redesigned. They are using finger friendly icons now.
9. Overall experience is not so good. Watching multimedia such as Youtube is like watching slideshow.
10. I tested Skyfire using Satio and connected to my 2Mbps WiFi connection. And Skyfire is not performing well.
11. Please Skyfire. Improve your rendering technology. You have a great product but you scored zero in terms of usability. I understand why you include supports for the latest web technology (Flash, Silverlight, AJAX, etc) but please get the basic stuff improved (e.g. text rendering, usability).
12. Get it from http://get.skyfire.com
13. Watch the video below, where they compared Skyfire with S60 Web and Opera Mobile 10.